


Meeting the Sublime

by Checkerbox



Series: heartfelt [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: First Meeting, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, alternate take on the first conversation with dorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Checkerbox/pseuds/Checkerbox
Summary: Half-frozen, nearly senseless, and high off the closest thing to divine revelation he will ever experience in his life, in the aftermath of Haven Trevelyan meets a man who starts a fire inside him.--Would that it could be literal.
Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus
Series: heartfelt [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1587253
Kudos: 27





	Meeting the Sublime

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this one might not entirely be recognizable given all the changes, but to be clear, this short is based on your first conversation with Dorian, period. I decided to blend in some elements from both the mage and Templar introductions, though it is the Templar route.

One step. Another. Another. Faster.

Trevelyan had long since started going numb, though he was relatively confident it was exhaustion and not hypothermia by the way that the wind still bitterly cut through the jacket wrapped tightly around his body.

Another step. One foot over the other. –No, not like that.

He stumbled. Mocking laughter rang over his shoulder.

“And now you cannot even walk properly. Oh, Alexiel. Maybe I should have had you thrown to the wolves when you were a boy. What a Herald you make.”

Correct footing. Step. Another.

How curious that his legs could burn as they cut through the snow, despite how ridiculously cold they were.

Trevelyan pulled himself to a stop as the demon drifted before him, lipless mouth moving as the words came out, clear and familiar and aching. “Even if you find your pilgrims, and even if they are not dead—what will you do? Continue to drift through them like a ghost? Chafe under their eyes forever? I know you, Alexiel. Lie down in the snow.”

It did not look anything like his father, just as the one before had not looked anything like his mother. But whenever his eyes rested upon it, he was completely convinced that this blue, mottled thing with no eyes was what his father had looked like before he died.

“They will see you. They will see what you are and they will cast you out. You are not worth enough to them to avoid it. Lie down.”

Trevelyan shuffled to the right to walk around him, but found his way blocked. He moved to the left. Again, his way was impeded. Stupid idiot demon. Move. 

“Even if you’re my—even if my father has somehow returned from the grave,” he growled, breath huffing in thick puffs of white, “Even if he has returned from the grave and is standing right in front of me _not freezing to death_ —Well I would still tell him to fuck off. I’ll live to _spite you_ , you ugly son of a bitch.”

He tried instead to push through it.

It grabbed his wrist. Sliding, choking despair washed over him, knocking the wind out of his lungs and causing his legs to buckle. There was barely any time to process the emotion before it took him over, a confusing rush of _feeling_ that came from nowhere.

What would be the point of going on any further?

He had given himself for a pack of strangers who had stood by and let him, and now they would move on without him. What could he expect in their ranks? Endless pretending? Always being measured against other people’s standards? Always having to live with that crawling in his skin, that feeling that he was being bound and muzzled?

What was he hoping for? _Companionship?_

The demon opened its mouth wide.

Trevelyan flexed the fingers of the hand that was in its grip, the sensation of magic flowing through his palm palpable even under the glove. He tugged—barely any effort, really. Just a small drawing in and out of that magic, like opening a present.

The demon was torn apart from the inside out as a little sliver of a hole sucked it through back to the Fade.

Trevelyan took just a moment to cry out in jubilation as the oppressive sadness lifted.

Then he screamed in pain as his hand became a cresting wave of agony.

Out of the corner of his eye, body curled in and squeezing his wrist hard, he saw a flash of green and a spiky, lean figure.

No, that wasn’t—that wasn’t fair, there wasn’t supposed to be another one—

Right as the Terror lunged for him, it was struck by a blast of hot fire that melted its form into dripping ectoplasm that splattered weightlessly against the snow.

A voice—an accent he didn’t recognize initially, a cultured lilt that set his head whirring. First it was far away, and then it was right near his ear. “That was incredible, what you did to the other one,” he heard the voice breathe, and suddenly there was someone reaching for his hand, tugging at the glove. “How did you do that? I didn’t realize you could open them as well as close them. May I see?”

Panic. Blinding and raw. He stumbled backwards, almost falling over entirely as his ankles caught in the thick snow, and hastily tugged the glove back over the offending hand.

Standing before him was a man with wind-flushed cheeks. A familiar man—not in the sense of a companion but the dim familiarity of someone that you had only just met, perhaps recognizable mostly because a mustache so ridiculously curled and immaculate as the one he had under his nose was something Trevelyan had never seen before. He was wrapped in several cloaks, a mage staff in his hand that was both ornate and worn from use. The crackling tang of magic still lingered around him like a smell, steam still trailing from his fingers.

…He had lost his bow in the avalanche, but some of his knives had stubbornly clung to his belt. It would be hard—easier if he struck first. Just draw in close and find an artery to nick, or else…perhaps incapacitate his arms in some way—

It was difficult to speak through the cold and the sensation of those soft grey eyes upon him. “You were at Haven.”

The voice—oh, the voice was smooth velvet, cheery and light. “Yes. I…apologize. I didn’t mean to frighten you there. My curiosity got the better of me.” He relaxed his posture from its previous one of startled concern, and that made it a little more bearable to face him directly. “Truthfully I’m rather stunned to find you out here alive.”

“It is cold enough that such will not be the case before long.” He licked his lips. Straightening up, he did his best to affect the imperiousness that he had seen from his tutors in the Templars. Before he got kicked out the first time, at least. “Mage! Now that you are here, make yourself useful and set me on fire!”

Surprise lit up his face. Then the mage’s mouth twitched into something that could have been a smile. “You’d certainly be warm, I suppose.”

Standing up straight was a poor idea, even that much effort draining what little of Trevelyan’s energy remained. He wobbled, blinking hard, and found that suddenly the man was standing there, arms wrapping clumsily around his torso. The staff fell to the snow with a soft _crunch._

“Incidentally,” he said with a grunt, struggling to readjust to support Trevelyan’s weight, “My name is Dorian. I don’t know if you caught my introduction with all the murderous Venatori and archdemons bearing down on us.”

His body was firm—the lean muscle of someone who did more than just read magical theory all day. Radiating heat like he was Maker-sent. _Imagine how his entrails would steam in the cold—_

Trevelyan was so very tired and exhausted and clung to Dorian’s comforting form like it was his last lifeline. And as he did so he was so frustrated he could cry.

“Come on, that’s it. –Maker, you’re practically an icicle. Just one moment.” Dorian’s hands on him warmed, and he once more felt magic flowing over his body. His insides thrashed and wailed and gnashed their teeth, but then the bitter cold lessened and he decided it wasn’t too bad. “How is that?”

“…Better.”

“Let us return to camp, then.”

Would that he could remain silent—but words sputtered out of him faster than he could think, stumbling and stiff. “The others—they’re all safe?” And though he spoke of the pilgrims as a whole, really there was a very specific group he was thinking about.

“Yes, yes. Everyone made it out through the passage alright. Thanks to you.” There was a pause and an appreciative note entered his tone. “—That was quite something you did, throwing yourself at the—darkspawn like that.”

“The magister,” Trevelyan jabbed. Dorian’s lips thinned.

“…The magister. Right. That will require some—some thought. –My point is, that was…well, it was very self-sacrificing of you, to do that for all these people.”

“Self-sacrificing.” And Trevelyan started to laugh at that, quiet and burbling giggles that could very well have been just the chattering of his breath. “I didn’t do it for them.”

He didn’t like people breaking his stuff, that was all.

“Tell me.” His teeth clicked in the back of his mouth, muscles aching from clenching but unable to do anything else in the cold as they walked. “Tell me how you came to be warning us about the Venatori.”

“I was at Redcliffe.” My, what a long distance to run. He must be exhausted. “The arl there had given the rebel mages sanctuary. A decent fellow, truth be told, but unfortunately for him my former mentor Alexius was looking to recruit for the ‘Elder One’…”

 _‘Corypheus_ ’, Trevelyan’s mind supplied. The name and the speech he had given had burned into his sense memory. ‘The will that is Corypheus’. It was poetry, words rumbling in the air when he’d spoken. Trevelyan wondered if that feeling he’d had when he’d been hoisted up into the air was what artists meant when they talked about the sublime. It had been unique. The savage delight he’d felt at toppling the beast, albeit temporarily, was altogether more familiar a feeling.

It was fun to do that. Topple and destroy the sublime. He should make a habit of it more often.

There was something quite sublime right next to him, right now.

“—You still with me, Herald?”

He realized, belatedly, that he was contemplating how to undo one of those buckles and wrap it around Dorian’s neck.

“My senses are shot,” he grumbled. “—And don’t call me Herald. …My name is Trevelyan.”

Dorian seemed oblivious to the danger to himself. Or perhaps he, a mage powerful enough to summon a wall of fire with a gesture, just didn’t see much threat from a man half-frozen who could barely walk. “Yes, I—gathered that from your companions. They were talking about you the entire evacuation.”

Right foot. Left foot. One over the other. Lean, when his vision started to blur a little. That was all his world should be. One over the other. –Only it was—it was alarming, but--

“Quite an eclectic bunch you have there, might I say. It does lead one wondering…”

\--Every word out of Dorian’s mouth was flipping his switches.

“Is there, perhaps, room for a Tevinter altus in the mix?”

It took a moment for the question to register as such. He blinked at Dorian dumbly, his mind running as quickly as it ever had but failing to catch on anything. “Room for a…What? You?”

“Me, yes.” The wind howled around them as they pressed on, and in the distance the faint lights of several small fires became visible. “Now might not be the best time to discuss this, but there is a fair contingent of your camp that would like to see me tossed out in the cold, under the misapprehension that I am some Venatori spy—”

Trevelyan snorted, too cold and tired to be tactful. “They’re stupid.”

“—Yes! I quite agree. Given that you _are_ the Herald and everything, I was wondering if you could talk some sense into them. Let them know that I would be ever so disappointed to run all this way only to be left to freeze to death. Or, worse, have my head cut off and put on a spike.”

The thought sent him giggling. “Is that what you think we ‘southerners’ do?”

“It is what I think you do to _mages_ , yes.”

“Well, you are wrong.” He swallowed, throat dry, longing to pitch forward and start swallowing snow. “We don’t behead them, we lock them in dungeons when they’re small children.”

“Unless they are under _your_ banner, I have noticed.”

The sentence struck Trevelyan oddly. The way it was phrased—as though he had put in any particular effort in protecting anyone. Certainly, he had dismantled the Templars, the organization that targeted mages more than any other. Certainly, he had embraced many stray apostates and former Circle members into his ranks to boost their numbers. Certainly, he had two particular mages in the eclectic circle of people he associated with that were not to be so much as inconvenienced under any cost. From an outside perspective, perhaps this did look like favoritism on his part.

It seemed unfair, to credit him with any kind of benevolence. Seeing mages as people did not endear them to him. It was the magic he adored.

“It’s not like I’m in charge,” he tried to protest. “Cassandra is the one who started all this.”

Dorian persisted. “But they would _listen_ to you. I saw how it was back in that Chantry. They didn’t look to this ‘Cassandra’. They looked to _you._ ”

Blast it all, he hated when other people made sense. “Well, maybe I’m not the best judge of character and you kill us all in our sleep.”

“Ignoring the fact that if I wanted to do so I _could have already_ —” It was very sound logic. This strange mage from Tevinter had already gone up in his estimation. “How about this. You simply encourage them to let me stay until I can prove myself. If indeed I turn out to be a spy, you may hang me later. I look good in rope.”

It was fortunate that the arrival of the rest of the rescue party covered his undignified splutter.

Cullen didn’t look entirely prepared for taking on his weight, but that was too bad because out of everyone there he had the fluffiest coat, and so Trevelyan threw himself into his arms immediately. It wasn’t as warm as being around someone who radiated magic and heat, but at least it didn’t give him that itchy desire to lash out that he had to suppress every few minutes.

“You found him,” he heard a woman say, stern and icy. Cassandra. Dear, suspicious Cassandra.

“Just in time to keep him from becoming a fear demon’s snack, might I add,” Dorian remarked tartly, putting his hands on his hips. “You are welcome.”

Perhaps this was a good point to intervene, but now that safety had been found his body was beginning to shut down.

“We would have found him on our own,” Cassandra continued to argue, one hand just brushing the hilt of her sword. She was afraid, of course she was. He knew her well enough by now to know that Cassandra’s base response to a crisis of faith was hostility. She was one of those people that let their heart do the thinking. “Without the risk of leaving him alone with a Tevinter mage, of all things. There is still the matter of whether you are welcome here at all.”

“What you would have _found_ ,” Dorian replied, “would be his frozen corpse. I suppose you _could_ chip off his arm to use for closing rifts, but that sounds a little garish, don’t you think?”

Ah, well, that settled it.

He pulled himself from Cullen, almost too exhausted to meet Cassandra’s gaze, and said, “Dorian stays.”

She looked like she wanted to argue. Instead she said only, “…For now, Trevelyan.”

Then, for the first time, he got a proper look at Dorian’s eyes. At the way they lit up with relief, the flush of light that he could not hide no matter how smug he tried to make his voice afterward. The little nod he gave in gratitude, a prim and proper cover over genuine enthusiasm.

His sweet tooth ached. He clamped his jaw.

That was when he lost consciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> It's easier to work on the shorts when I have a larger fic I'm writing, I've noticed.
> 
> I am truly, genuinely trying to wrap up the fanfiction and get to all the original story ideas I have, but I keep...wanting to do more.


End file.
